Coinbase Users File Class Action After Getting Locked Out From Accounts

Coinbase users filed a class action after getting locked out from accounts as they claimed the company wrongfully locked them out as we can see more in our latest Coinbase news today.

The claims are only allegations for now but they will bring attention to the Coinbase customer service issues. The group of six Coinbase users filed a class-action lawsuit against the exchange as it claimed the company locked them out of their accounts for periods of up to a few months. The group is seeking damages of more than $5 million for themselves and other users who registered an account in the past four years and who also got barred from accessing their accounts for a long period of time.

In a complaint filed on Friday in San Francisco federal court, Joseph Tresder of Oklahoma claimed that he deposited $30,000 last December to buy the cryptocurrency XRP but then a month later he received an error message where it said that his login credentials were not valid. Despite phoning and emailing the company a few times, the completing requested more measures to verify his identity and Tresder said that it took the exchange months to restore the account. Treseder and the others were locked out of their accounts and were prevented from trading or withdrawing their funds and in some cases caused them to lose money when the prices dropped. They blamed the exchange for mishaps and said that the company should not allow this to happen. The complaint reads:

“Coinbase engage[d] in a scheme … [that] prevents its consumers from accessing their accounts and/or funds for arbitrary reasons and arbitrary amounts of time, and thereby … unable to ‘invest, spend, save, earn, and use,’ or even withdraw their funds.”

In response, one spokesperson provided a statement:

 “We take all customer concerns seriously. We are aware of the complaint and are reviewing the allegations, but we have no further comment at this time.”

The complaints are only allegations now and it is not clear if they are all true or if some of the users did something to justify the exchange locking the accounts. The lawsuit is likely to call further attention to the customer services practices which have been a source of frustration for users. The six users who filed the complaint recounted similar issues of being unable to reach the company or being rebuffed and one of them even claims that he sent “upwards of 100 emails to Defendant’s customer service email address but never received a response.”